A Snapshot of Forest Carbon Integrating an Undergraduate Capstone and Graduate Research.

Capstone courses weave together the threads of completed coursework and they prepare students for transitions to the workforce and graduate studies. This presentation describes how a ten-person undergraduate capstone class calculated carbon balance at the L.W. Schatz Demonstration Forest in Northern California. Subgroups of three to four students visited the site, proposed menthods for quantitation, collected and prepared materials, and analyzed samples using loss on ignition and combustion analysis. Their carbon analysis added baseline information to a M.S. study of soil carbon and carbon estimates from standing trees in a variable thinning experiment. All ten students collaborated to write a technical report then gavean oral presentation of their project to a jury of three faculty members. This presentation will reflect on the efficacy of this capstone approach in light of current efforts to create confluent capstones.